Hello everyone, given that this is engaged buddhism part of dharmawheel I felt that this section was the most appropriate forum for my request. With this said I am reaching out to fellow meditators in the hope of enlisting your support. In short, I am conducting a quick, 5-8 minute survey as part of my master's thesis to see if there is an empirical link between mindfulness and shifts in consciousness. If a significant link is indeed found then this can open the door to further studies on this topic along with promoting clinical applications of mindfulness in mental health.

Given that I can't simply ask people on the street about the effects of meditation on their lives your assistance is greatly appreciated. If you have any questions feel free to ask them here and I will attempt to answer them promptly. Thank you!

"I could be experiencing some emotion and not be conscious of it until sometime later. "Which doesn't make any sense to me,and from the Buddhist understanding, experiencing something and being conscious of it are the same thing.So, you can't be experiencing it and not be conscious of it. awareness (being conscious of) of something is the experience.So, I stopped taking the survey....

Profile Picture: "The Foaming Monk"The Chinese characters are Fo (buddha) and Ming (bright). The image is of a student of Buddhism, who, imagining himself to be a monk, and not understanding the true meaning of the words takes the sound of the words literally. Likewise, People on web forums sometime seem to be foaming at the mouth. Original painting by P.Volker /used by permission.

From OP's link above:"What is the title of this study?Mindfulness and Self-Absorption: Examining the relationship between non-elaborative attention and shifts in rigidity of self-consciousness.What is the purpose of this study?The purpose of this study is to determine whether or not a relationship exists between the practice of mindfulness and the degree to which a person rigidly sustains their attention on self-oriented processes (i.e. self-consciousness). The results of this study may help to clarify the relationship between these two theoretically distinct ideas and any demographic variables that may moderate the aforementioned relationship."

"What is the title of this study?Mindfulness and Self-Absorption: Examining the relationship between non-elaborative attention and shifts in rigidity of self-consciousness.What is the purpose of this study?The purpose of this study is to determine whether or not a relationship exists between the practice of mindfulness and the degree to which a person rigidly sustains their attention on self-oriented processes (i.e. self-consciousness). The results of this study may help to clarify the relationship between these two theoretically distinct ideas and any demographic variables that may moderate the aforementioned relationship."

Does centering oneself more make a person more self-centered?(is that what this study is trying to find out? I flunked academia)...

Profile Picture: "The Foaming Monk"The Chinese characters are Fo (buddha) and Ming (bright). The image is of a student of Buddhism, who, imagining himself to be a monk, and not understanding the true meaning of the words takes the sound of the words literally. Likewise, People on web forums sometime seem to be foaming at the mouth. Original painting by P.Volker /used by permission.

"What is the title of this study?Mindfulness and Self-Absorption: Examining the relationship between non-elaborative attention and shifts in rigidity of self-consciousness.What is the purpose of this study?The purpose of this study is to determine whether or not a relationship exists between the practice of mindfulness and the degree to which a person rigidly sustains their attention on self-oriented processes (i.e. self-consciousness). The results of this study may help to clarify the relationship between these two theoretically distinct ideas and any demographic variables that may moderate the aforementioned relationship."

Does centering oneself more make a person more self-centered?(is that what this study is trying to find out? I flunked academia)...

I teach research methods to undergrads. We spend most of the first semester just on putting together a proper research question. One of the most important characteristics of a research question is this:

a research question does not presuppose an answer.

still good: Wayne Booth, The Craft of Research

Need help getting on retreat? Want to support others in practice? Pay the Dana for Dharma forum a visit...

I have participated in some of these studies and read some research about it. Scientific validation strikes me as being irrelevant to the value of meditation. Perhaps it could be seen as an upaya whereby meditators 'speak the language' of the culture they're in, in order to point out the value of the practice. I also read, somewhere, a recent meta-study which claimed that 'scientific studies of meditation' were frequently undermined by participant bias. i.e. those investigating it, and those participating in it, all 'believed' in meditation and so could not be regarded as 'objective' in regards to it.

Here's a picture of a meditator patiently training scientists:

Learn to do good, refrain from evil, purify the mind ~ this is the teaching of the Buddhas

PadmaVonSamba wrote:I got as far as the rating system which started with:

"I could be experiencing some emotion and not be conscious of it until sometime later. "Which doesn't make any sense to me,and from the Buddhist understanding, experiencing something and being conscious of it are the same thing.So, you can't be experiencing it and not be conscious of it. awareness (being conscious of) of something is the experience.So, I stopped taking the survey....

What about Alaya Vijnana..isn't this essentially a subconscious process much of the time?

PadmaVonSamba wrote:I got as far as the rating system which started with:

"I could be experiencing some emotion and not be conscious of it until sometime later. "Which doesn't make any sense to me,and from the Buddhist understanding, experiencing something and being conscious of it are the same thing.So, you can't be experiencing it and not be conscious of it. awareness (being conscious of) of something is the experience.So, I stopped taking the survey....

Hi Padma,

This particular question comes from the Mindfulness Awareness Attention Scale (albeit the abridged version), which rather well-known and frequently used in empirical studies on mindfulness. Despite its popularity within academic circles I must confess my belief that is far from perfect: How do you objectively measure something that is intrinsically non-conceptual (e.g. the quality of our phenomenal experience)? However, despite my qualms the scientific study of mindfulness is still in its infancy and a partial aim of this study is to expand the boundaries of our scientific inquiry into the effects of mindfulness.

On a further note, while your comment on the relation between consciousness and actuality question falls outside the scope of my study this is nevertheless a very interesting question. If I may say so, it is my personal belief that our experience of reality (or, simply ‘reality’) is not only fluid but can also assume different levels of richness, detail, and differentiation. A thought about the future, for instance, may trigger a negative emotion within me which may further lead to a daydream in which I enact certain behaviors or actions. The point is that my experience of this process (particularly with reference to my sense of self as an object associated with a personal history) can be very different depending on the degree/intensity to which I am observing it. On the one hand I can be stuck in it and on the other, aware and mostly free of its effects. Similarly, when emotionally injured some people first feel hurt and then anger yet the transition from pain to anger is so quick that it may appear that there was only anger. As a second brief example, simply have a sense of self (sensations, etc.) does not necessarily translate into an experience of annata. There is, in both cases, a similar yet qualitatively different feel, texture, or richness to it.

At any rate I appreciate your spent time in not only looking at the survey but also raising some very good points.

Within experimental psychology there are several models of self-consciousness. Older models dissected self-consciousness into two components: public self-consciousness (awareness of ourselves as objects that stimulate others) and private self-consciousness (awareness of ‘internal’ events such as thoughts, memories, sensations, etc.). More modern theories have gravitated towards analyzing the private component even further into ‘self-reflectivness (e.g. a process of evaluation)’ and ‘internal state awareness (e.g. a non-elaborate awareness of internal processes)’ or similar variants.

Along these lines patterns of self-consciousness -- which the literature has empirically linked with various behaviors and modes of thoughts, feelings, and recollecting memories -- emerge depending on the degree of attention that is habitually placed in each domain. For instance, people who are depressed tend to ruminate because their attention is conditioned towards negative self-evaluation. Thus, in this context by posing a ‘shift in self-consciousness’ in relation to mindfulness I am simply investigating if a statistical relationship exists between the practice of mindfulness (and associated moderators, such as overall time spent practicing mindfulness, etc.) on the one hand and self-consciousness on the other.I realize this may have been somewhat more than you had wanted but am open to writing more about it (I really enjoy reflecting on and discussing this topic).